Time to move off MovableType?

Several days ago, I asked in this blog if anyone knew how to create a category-based feed for moon.mozpad.org. I got no responses on that. Nor did I find anything useful in the MovableType documentation, or in the help forums, or on Google’s searches.

That, plus the newest rounds of blogspam I’ve been getting, are starting to become really, really annoying. Also, I just love messing with XHTML, and being able to serve a blog as application/xhtml+xml would be nice. Being able to throw SVG in there, inline, would be even nicer.

So, without wanting to host it myself, I’m wondering if any popular blogging platform can do all of the above – easily – and also import all the entries and comments I currently have on this weblog. If a fellow Mozillian would be willing to host these thoughts, and can do the complete import, I’d be quite happy

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. I simply want to migrate to a new blogging platform that is a little more customizable and easier to make changes to.

UPDATE: It seems everyone’s recommending WordPress. Okay. 🙂

I’m also cleaning up Ludovic’s reply, and finding myself wishing Firefox had search & replace capabilites for HTML textboxes and inputs. Please tell me if you know of an extension to do that…

12 thoughts on “Time to move off MovableType?”

  1. I think you’re looking for WordPress. To answer your concerns:
    – it can do category-based feeds
    – blogspam should be taken care of by Akismet
    – templates are very customizable, so you should be able to serve whatever you want
    – I’m not sure about the SVG
    – it will import your MT data
    – a very active community, which is awesome for finding support and plugins

  2. WordPress does category feeds by default. Plenty of spam solutions (Askimet works for me.)
    Here’s a plugin to make it output as application/xhtml+xml. Of course you can just customise an existing theme to your needs or write your own.
    It’ll import MT no worries.
    Hosting it yourself is about 100x more awesome and powerful, but you could try looking at getting a blog on blog.mozilla.com (not sure what the policy is there) or going for wordpress.com. On blog.mozilla.com you can probably convince them to add themes/plugins for you. On wordpress.com I doubt it (ie. serving as application/xhtml+xml isn’t going to happen.)

  3. You can use an askimet plugin with MT.
    And category based feed are possible You need to creater a new archive template with the following code :

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="<$MTPublishCharset$>"?>
    <rss version="2.0"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
    xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/"
    xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
    <channel>
    <title><$MTBlogName remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title>
    <link><$MTBlogURL$></link>
    <description><$MTBlogDescription remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description>
    <dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
    <dc:creator><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries></dc:creator>
    <dc:date><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></MTEntries></dc:date>
    <admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://www.movabletype.org/?v=<$MTVersion$>" />
    <sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
    <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
    <sy:updateBase>2000-01-01T12:00+00:00</sy:updateBase>
    <MTEntries lastn="15">
    <item>
    <title><$MTEntryTitle remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title>
    <link><$MTEntryLink encode_xml="1"$></link>
    <description><$MTEntryBody  encode_xml="1"$></description>
    <guid isPermaLink="false"><$MTEntryID$>@<$MTBlogURL$<>/guid>
    <dc:subject><$MTEntryCategory remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></dc:subject>
    <dc:date><$MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"$><$MTBlogTimezone$></dc:date>
    </item>
    </MTEntries>
    </channel>
    </rss>
  4. You can even sign up for a free account on wordpress.com and I think it gives you all the features still.
    If all else fails, I could host it for you (assuming that something.shawnwilsher.com would be ok for you)

  5. XHTML is going away in the long run anyway. The current work of the HTML working group will supersede it.
    (From Alex: I strongly disagree. XHTML 1 may live in future 1.x versions, but XHTML 2 is probably dead. XHTML is necessary if you want to integrate SVG, MathML, or other XML languages into the XHTML document – which realistically, I do want to do.)

  6. I second wordpress.
    They have a very good architecture, and you write templates in php+html, so you can do anything you want. It’s extendable through plug-ins, which are actually really easy to write yourself if you wanna share the goods.
    RSS feed templates are written in php+xml so you can do them however you want too.

  7. I’d recommend wordpress.com if you don’t want to host yourself. Won’t be able to muck with HTML to much though, I guess you may be able to use SVG in posts (but not in the design).
    Blog spam is a non-issue, it does categories, and I believe imports MT data.
    If you want the control, you need to self host (wordpress.org). Still use akismet for anti-spam, and get all of the above plus 101% control.

  8. Converting WordPress to use application/xhtml+xml doesn’t seem particularly safe, since it’s not designed to generate XML properly – it can easily break when you accept user input.

  9. I really have to recommend Drupal, not wordpress. I’m not sure if you are making progress with this but if you are having second thoughts about wordpress then let me know and I’ll give you an account to play with Drupal, no commitments, if you like it then you get a free drupal blog, if not then no big loss 😉

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